1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information storage medium and a method of recording and/or reproducing data thereon, and more particularly, to an information storage medium which contains speed information indicating whether a drive can record and/or reproduce data on the information storage medium, where the drive and the information storage medium are based on different versions of a standard, and a method of recording and/or reproducing data on the information storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
General information storage media is widely used as information recording media in optical pickup apparatuses for recording/reproducing information in a non-contact way. Optical disks, a type of information storage media, are classified as compact disks (CDs) or digital versatile disks (DVDs) according to their information storage capacity. Examples of recordable optical disks are 650MB CD-R, CD-RW, 4.7GB DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM. Furthermore, HD-DVDs having a recording capacity of 20 GB or greater are under development.
Standards for the physical structures or data structures of various types of storage media or standards for various methods of recording and/or reproducing data thereon are being established. The standards for storage media describe a great number of characteristics, particularly, recording capacity and recording speed. For example, if certain recording/reproducing conditions are required to increase the recording capacity and the conditions are different from those prescribed in an existing standard, the standard version number changes.
FIG. 1 shows the structure of a data area in a conventional recordable information storage medium, which includes a lead-in area 10, a user data area 20, and a lead-out area 30. The lead-in area 10 can be divided into a reproduction-only area and a recordable area. As shown in FIG. 1, the lead-in area 10 may include a first buffer zone 10-1, a disk control data zone 10-2, a disk test zone 10-3, a drive test zone 10-4, a defect management zone 10-5, a reserved zone 10-6, and a second buffer zone 10-7. For example, the first buffer zone 10-1 and the disk control data zone 10-2 are located in the reproduction-only area where data is recorded during the manufacture of a storage medium. The other zones are located in the recordable area.
FIG. 2 shows the data structure of the disk control data zone 10-2 which is comprised of a plurality of bytes. The type and version number of a disk are recorded in a zeroth byte, the size of the disk is recorded in a first byte, and the structure of the disk, for example, the number of data layers, is recorded in a second byte. However, information regarding recording speeds and/or reproducing speeds in drives that support old versions of a standard is not recorded.
When a standard version number is updated, recording/reproducing conditions are prescribed according to a new standard. In general, when the version number of a standard changes, a drive supporting a lower version cannot recognize a storage medium supporting the higher (i.e., a later) version. Hence, if the version number of a storage medium is different from that of a drive, recording and/or reproducing data may be impossible. However, although the version of a standard changes, some of the recording and/or reproducing speeds prescribed in the version of the revised standard may be compatible with some of the speeds prescribed in the older version of the standard. For example, if version 1.0 of the standard prescribes 1× to 4× recording speeds, and a new version 2.0 of the standard prescribes 3× to 8× recording speeds, a drive based on the version 1.0 of the standard can record and/or reproduce data on a storage medium based on the version 2.0 at 3× or 4× recording speed.
Since recording speed information is not recorded, a drive based on the version 1.0 standard is incapable of recognizing its ability to record and/or reproduce data on a storage medium based on the version 2.0 standard.
Accordingly, every time a standard changes, a new drive must be provided, thus resulting in economic waste.